3 abuse, threaten FDA officer who went to inspect hotel

Three persons booked for abusing and threatening a food inspector who found a cockroach in a hotel's food. The accused have been released on bail.

Mumbai: Three persons were booked recently for allegedly abusing and threatening a food inspector who went to a hotel to collect samples of the food in which a cockroach was found.

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The accused have been identified as Pravin Ingale, Vijay Ingale and Anjali Ingale. On Thursday, Govinda Gaikwad, a food safety officer from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), went to Mars Hotel and Resorts near Terminal 1 of the airport, after a worker complained that his packaged lunch box had a cockroach in it. The worker called the police, who called the FDA official for further process.

“The said site is undergoing renovation work, and the workers are provided packaged plates of food by the establishment,” an officer from Sahar police station said. “Pravin – the main accused – introduced himself to the FDA officer as the manager of the construction crew.”

“We could see there was a cockroach in one of the packaged food plates which was open. However, there were two other packaged plates of the same food, which the food inspector wanted to take for analysis as well. The workers insisted on him only taking the opened plate and not the others,” the officer added.

The workers became furious and insisted that the police should initiate an FIR on the hotel management instantly, the officer said, adding that, however, the food inspector explained to them that the process starts with taking the necessary samples. “This angered the accused further. They started blaming him and us for not wanting to take action against the hotel. We even made them speak to senior FDA officials. Despite this, they physically stopped us from taking the packaged lunch plates,” the officer said.

Gaikwad warned the accused to not obstruct government work, the officer said, adding, “However, they started abusing him. One of them asked Gaikwad for his address threatening to come to his home and ‘pay his dues’. He also said they could see to it that he was knocked off while walking on the street.”

“The accused even snatched away the paper on which the inspector was documenting their complaint, tore it and put the pieces in Gaikwad’s shirt pocket,” the officer added. “Pravin insisted that the panchnama of the place and the food be done as per his instructions all over again.”

The trio has been booked under sections 353 (assault or criminal force to deter a public servant), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Food Safety and Standards Act.

All three of them were taken into police custody the next day, after which they were released on bail.